Here are 100 books that My Last Continent fans have personally recommended if you like
My Last Continent.
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I know a book can change a person’s life because one of my early life-changing events was reading Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. From it, I took away the idea of how a fact is made, not discovered, and how facts, even those as “objective” as those in science, are different in different ages. It’s less a matter of one age being wrong about “Nature,” for example, than it is that a concept like “Nature” emerges out of a scrum of attitudes, technologies, conventions, etc.
I especially loved that this book has the ability to bring together elements as disparate as science, politics, and our common humanity. I repeatedly stopped reading to think about what was written: a depiction of our society and our place at the crossroads of possible futures that will depend on our attitudes to the plants and animals that make up the earth we share.
But the moral core at the center of this novel makes it more than just a good story. I kept thinking that it was easy to imagine Powers’s book as what many people believe is the “Great American Novel,” Moby-Dick, if we replace Melville’s whale with Powers’s trees and set it in the present instead of the 19th century.
The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of-and paean to-the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers's twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours-vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see…
Travels to the Arctic and Antarctic and time spent alongside researching counting Magellanic penguins in Argentina have inspired not only The Tourist Trail but a life spent advocating for animals. The oceans may appear vast and impenetrable but they are fragile, and we need to act now to protect the many species who call these waters home. The books here not only expose the crisis we face but highlight those people and organizations who have dedicated their lives to protecting our planet and its many residents. It’s not too late to make a difference and I hope these books inspire you to lend your voice and energy to the fight.
If you’ve ever considered eating “sustainably” fished seafood, this book will open your eyes to the fact that there is no such thing as truly sustainable fishing. Through stories of modern-day, high-seas piracy, you’ll get a better understanding of how rogue fishing vessels will go anywhere, legal or otherwise, to make a profit. And that one of many reasons why fish species are in great decline everywhere. But this is a demand-driven problem, which means we all have a role to play in solving it.
This modern pirate yarn has all the makings of a great true adventure tale and is also an exploration of the ways our culinary tastes have all manner of unintended consequences for the world around us.
Hooked is a story about the poaching of the Patagonian toothfish (known to gourmands as Chilean Sea Bass) and is built around the pursuit of the illegal fishing vessel Viarsa by an Australian patrol boat, Southern Supporter, in one of the longest pursuits in maritime history.
Author G. Bruce Knecht chronicles how an obscure fish merchant in California "discovered" and renamed the fish, kicking…
I have written about the environment as a journalist since 2005, for magazines and newspapers including National Geographic,The New York Times, and Outside. For my last book, I wanted to write about animals as individuals—not just as units in a species, the way they are often thought of by conservationists. Diving into research about animal selfhood was an amazing journey. It helped shape my book, but it also changed the way I see the world around me—and who and what I think of as “people”!
To research my book I read lots of books about new findings in animal cognition.
Animals are smarter than science used to give them credit for, more emotional than science ever dared believe, and they even have personalities. But for me, the most mind-blowing of the many books I read on this topic was this book about the inner lives of fish.
Like so many others, I had assumed they were pretty dim-witted, and even believed they didn’t feel pain. Not so! This book explains the new science of what fish lives are like and it is truly amazing how much they are like us—and we like them.
Endorsed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama - 'Balcombe vividly shows that fish have feelings and deserve consideration and protection like other sentient beings'
What's the truth behind the old adage that goldfish have a three-second memory? Do fishes think? Can they recognize the humans who peer back at them from above the surface of the water? Myth-busting biologist and animal behaviour expert Jonathan Balcombe takes us under the sea, through streams and estuaries to the other side of…
Travels to the Arctic and Antarctic and time spent alongside researching counting Magellanic penguins in Argentina have inspired not only The Tourist Trail but a life spent advocating for animals. The oceans may appear vast and impenetrable but they are fragile, and we need to act now to protect the many species who call these waters home. The books here not only expose the crisis we face but highlight those people and organizations who have dedicated their lives to protecting our planet and its many residents. It’s not too late to make a difference and I hope these books inspire you to lend your voice and energy to the fight.
A wry tale of financial desperation, conceptual art, insanity, infertility, seagulls, marital crisis, jellyfish, organized crime, and the plight of a plastic-filled ocean, JoeAnn Hart’s novel takes a smart, satirical look at family, the environment, and life in a hardscrabble seaside town in Maine. I am proud that Ashland Creek Press (which Midge Raymond and I founded in 2011) published this amazing novel.
When everything around you is sinking, sometimes it takes desperate measures to stay afloat
When Duncan Leland looks down at the garbage-strewn beach beneath his office window, he sees the words God Help Us scrawled in the sand. While it seems a fitting message-not only is Duncan's business underwater, but his marriage is drowning as well-he goes down to the beach to erase it. Once there, he helps a seagull being strangled by a plastic six-pack holder-the only creature in worse shape than he is at the moment. Duncan rescues the seagull, not realizing that he's being filmed by a…
Travels to the Arctic and Antarctic and time spent alongside researching counting Magellanic penguins in Argentina have inspired not only The Tourist Trail but a life spent advocating for animals. The oceans may appear vast and impenetrable but they are fragile, and we need to act now to protect the many species who call these waters home. The books here not only expose the crisis we face but highlight those people and organizations who have dedicated their lives to protecting our planet and its many residents. It’s not too late to make a difference and I hope these books inspire you to lend your voice and energy to the fight.
Paul Watson, the founder of the Sea Shepherd Society, inspired the character of Aeneus in The Tourist Trail. This book was my introduction to Paul and his colleagues and the passions they share for the oceans and their residents. If you’ve watched the TV series Whale Wars then you are already familiar with the risks these volunteers take to protect whales and so many other species. Paul Watson has also written a number of books that are worth reading. Learn more at Sea Shepherd.
Now with a new afterword by the author, the tenth-anniversary edition of Peter Heller’s “swashbuckling adventure” (Publishers Weekly) takes us on a hair-raising journey aboard a whale saving pirate ship with a vigilante crew whose mission is to stop illegal Japanese whaling in the stormy seas of Antarctica.
The Whale Warriors is an adventure story set in the far reaches of the globe. For two months in 2005, journalist Peter Heller was aboard the Farley Mowat as it stalked its prey—a Japanese whaling fleet—through the storms and ice of Antarctica. The little ship is black, flies under a jolly roger,…
I’ve loved nature and being outdoors since childhood, when I would escape our apartment complex by berry-picking in a park or sneaking onto the lush grounds of a local mental hospital. I grew up in Queens, New York, at a time of rapid development, and mourned as trees were felled for housing. I became an avid hiker, canoeist, and gardener as an adult, and serve on the board of an environmental organization in Montauk, Long Island. What we lose when we lose our connection to nature, saving our last wild places, and leaving a sustainable world to the next generation are key themes in my forthcoming novel--and personal motivation.
I love camping out in the wild, so for me reading this novel was a vicarious extended vacation.
The novel centers on a woman who escapes to Alaska with her two children and makes her way across the state in a beat-up rented recreational vehicle they call the Chateau. The fantastically flawed and appealing Josie and her two children are all wonderfully drawn. Anyone who has ever gone camping will get a kick out of all the details of life in this wreck on wheels.
The novel is not just laugh-out-loud funny; it’s also profound and deeply felt. I also wouldn’t have expected a novel that makes a compelling argument that we need to address climate change to be set in Alaska, where there’s so much untrammeled wilderness. But this novel taught me that in fact, the effects of climate change are actually more harsh closer to the poles.
'The mirror image of Eggers's brilliantly dystopian The Circle... [A] state of the nation novel, cleansing the spirit and lifting the heart' Guardian
A hilarious and heart-warming misadventure through modern America: it's time for the family vacation...
Josie's life is falling apart - lawsuits raining down, her business down the drain and a feckless husband long gone - so she gathers up her two kids and lights out for the wilderness. The Alaskan wilderness, to be specific.
This is a story about the trip of a lifetime. It involves one battered old RV,…
I’ve loved nature and being outdoors since childhood, when I would escape our apartment complex by berry-picking in a park or sneaking onto the lush grounds of a local mental hospital. I grew up in Queens, New York, at a time of rapid development, and mourned as trees were felled for housing. I became an avid hiker, canoeist, and gardener as an adult, and serve on the board of an environmental organization in Montauk, Long Island. What we lose when we lose our connection to nature, saving our last wild places, and leaving a sustainable world to the next generation are key themes in my forthcoming novel--and personal motivation.
This marvelous novel allowed me to travel to the remote southwest coast of Ireland, on the Beara peninsula.
The landscape is so evocatively and vividly described that I felt as if I were hiking along with the appealing protagonist, Annie Crowe. Like me, Annie turns to walking and nature when she is depressed or needs thinking time, and boy does Annie have demons to battle! She’s a great character - both tough and fragile, a recovering alcoholic.
On a job assignment as a public relations expert in support of a copper mine, she finds herself thrust into controversy with the local community. It opposes the mine because it would despoil this wild landscape and also endanger the nesting Red-billed Chough. I loved every detail of the walks and the cliffs and the ocean that Johnson describes.
And running throughout is a spicy thread of ancient mythology and Gaelic mysticism, which…
Along the windswept coast of Ireland, a woman discovers the landscape of her own heart
When Annie Crowe travels from Seattle to a small Irish village to promote a new copper mine, her public relations career is hanging in the balance. Struggling to overcome her troubled past and a failing marriage, Annie is eager for a chance to rebuild her life.
Yet when she arrives on the remote Beara Peninsula, Annie learns that the mine would encroach on the nesting ground of an endangered bird, the Red-billed Chough, and many in the community are fiercely protective of this wild place.…
I’ve loved nature and being outdoors since childhood, when I would escape our apartment complex by berry-picking in a park or sneaking onto the lush grounds of a local mental hospital. I grew up in Queens, New York, at a time of rapid development, and mourned as trees were felled for housing. I became an avid hiker, canoeist, and gardener as an adult, and serve on the board of an environmental organization in Montauk, Long Island. What we lose when we lose our connection to nature, saving our last wild places, and leaving a sustainable world to the next generation are key themes in my forthcoming novel--and personal motivation.
I found this to be one of the most compelling novels I’ve read to draw me deep into the fabric of the hardscrabble life of a New England community down on its luck with the crash of the cod fishing industry.
The sympathetic but thwarted characters are all entangled in dangerous waters of one kind or another, from drug smuggling to physical danger to marital issues. I was as fascinated to learn about the economics and lifestyle of the fishing life as I was moved by the struggles of characters caught in a complex net of change outside their control.
This is the story of empty oceans and the men who fish them. It's the story of Rosaline, a New England fishing community facing the loss of its traditional way of life, struggling against the imposition of fishing quotas, the closing of the local cannery and the encroachment of the heritage industry, which exploits with nostalgia a way of life before it has even given up its last breath. It's the story of the denizens of Rosaline: John Fitz and his best friend Chris who work on John's father's fishing boat, The Pearl; barmaid Kate, indifferent mother and neglected wife…
I was a teenager in the 80s (with the big-hair pictures to prove it) and a chain-smoking, bar-hopping, flannel-clad twenty-something in the 90s. I remember everything about those days. Because my brain is basically a pop culture museum, most of my books are nostalgic, geared toward Gen X, and heavily influenced by the John Hughes films from my youth. My novels are always written with humor, heart, and heat… and more than a little sarcasm. Then again, I’m a lifelong Jersey girl, so that might go without saying. I love reading stories with fun, gorgeous heroes and smart, vibrant heroines… so that’s what I write.
Tara Sivec is flipping hysterical, and if you haven’t discovered her yet, I highly suggest you dive into her entire book catalog immediately. Seduction and Snacks was my first read from her, and I noticed so many similar pop culture references in our writing that I messaged her to introduce myself and find out if we’d been separated at birth. S&S is crude, silly, and thoroughly entertaining. Oh, and also—according to the warning on her book’s sales page—not to be taken seriously. You should probably go in with an open mind (and a bottle of Tequila).
From USA Today bestselling author Tara Sivec comes the first book in the hilarious Chocolate Lovers series - NOW A FILM FROM PASSIONFLIX!
Claire is a twenty-something, single mom that grudgingly helps her best friend sell sex toys while she attempts to make enough money to start her own business to give her foul-mouthed, but extremely lovable (when he’s asleep) toddler a better life.
When Carter, the one-night-stand from her past that changed her life forever, shows up in her hometown bar without any recollection of her besides her unique chocolate scent, Claire will make it a point that he…
I’ve been in love with HR novels ever since my parents took me to a bookstore when I was fifteen, where for the first time, I stepped into an aisle filled with romance. It was love at first sight, as I searched for that one book that called to me. After finishing that book, my world had changed. Now, seventeen years later, as a published author for both New Age and Historical Romance, I still feverishly read romance books to continue feeding that internal flame of love and passion I still have for Historical Romance. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have.
Almost A Lady is filled with love, passion, and adventure for the restless soul. It has a fiery heroine who isn’t afraid to fight for her life, and the most ideal roguish pirate scoundrel one longs for in a Historical Romance. The perfect enemies-to-lovers tale that will have you staying up late for more. I loved this book because it revealed far more than what a traditional HR setting could be. It gave me love and peril and a hot slow-burn of fervor and intensity one needs in a great Historical Romance.
In this exhilarating new novel of romance and intrigue, New York Times bestselling author Jane Feather tells the tale of an adventurous young woman and the hardened spy who is unexpectedly–and most inconveniently–captivated by her....
Independent and inquisitive, Meg Barratt wants nothing to do with any stifling society marriage. Meg yearns for the kind of passion that exists only in books–until a violent storm lands her on the high seas with the most dangerous and seductive man she’s ever encountered…or imagined.
For Cosimo, women are objects, to be manipulated for business or pleasure…sometimes both. But when the seafaring assassin accidentally…
